Language Overflow

tchrist

00:01

@snailboat spaghetti :)

Anonymous

00:17

Italian food is some of the only food I know how to make! :-)

Anonymous

I have lots of semolina noodles in the house.

Anonymous

I don't really know the difference between all the sorts of wheat noodles there are.

Anonymous

I know Chinese miàn (Japanese men) refers to wheat noodles.

Damkerng T.

I think it's "mee" around here. (Probably in Teochew or Hokkien)

(with the same tone as miàn)

Anonymous

Miàn isn't in the Qièyùn, so I don't think there's a record of the Middle Chinese pronunciation, but it must have been similar given that it's men in Japanese, myeon in Korean, and miến in Vietnamese.

Anonymous

00:28

forvo.com/word/%E9%BA%B5

Anonymous

I wonder if they put Teochew under Min Nan.

Anonymous

I don't have any real resources for Hokkien or Teochew.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Do you think the vowel at the end could be nasalized?

Damkerng T.

I think it's at least somewhat nasalized.

Anonymous

A-ha!

Anonymous

00:37

[mi] and [mĩ] are supposed to contrast in Teochew.

Anonymous

I guess that may be where the final /n/ went! :-)

Damkerng T.

That's interesting!

Anonymous

[ĩ] [ĩ]

Anonymous

How do these two render for you?

Damkerng T.

Like identical twins. :D

Anonymous

00:45

On my Windows computer, they look the same.

Anonymous

On my iPhone, they look the same.

Anonymous

On my Linux computer, they look very different! ;-(

Anonymous

On one of them, I see a squiggly (I like saying squiggly more than tilde) above a dot.

Anonymous

I think the squiggly is supposed to replace the dot.

Anonymous

If I use the precomposed character, it looks right.

Anonymous

00:47

I'm not positive that the squiggly is supposed to replace the dot in the ‹i›, but I think it is.

Damkerng T.

Ahh... maybe it's because of ligature.

tchrist

@snailboat Yes yes yes.

When you have a combined-on-top on an i, it is supposed to switch to the ı.

Anonymous

Ah, thank you :-)

tchrist

Anonymous

That's how I expected them to look!

tchrist

00:51

mac(tchrist)% echo '[ĩ] [ĩ]' | uniquote -v
[\N{LATIN SMALL LETTER I WITH TILDE}] [i\N{COMBINING TILDE}]

Damkerng T.

หมี่ ([mii] or "mee" or noodle) has four characters. ห ม ี ่. Your combination is similar to the combination of ี + ่ , in a way. I remember that in some fonts on Linux, words like หมี่ wouldn't look right either.

Anonymous

Oh no!

Anonymous

Is that right?

tchrist

Damkerng T.

01:26

@snailboat Yes!

The tonal mark ่ is supposed to be rendered upon the vowel ี .

Damkerng T.

11:09

2

Q: Pronunciation of 'Fen', 'Fan', and 'Fang' in English

Can someone describe the difference in pronunciation between these three English words: Fen, Fan and Fang. 'Fen' is the easiest, because it's just like the first syllable in 'fence'. What other common / easy-to-pronounce words have the syllables 'Fan' or 'Fang' in them? I can hear the differe...

pronunciation

It's really not easy to describe the difference in words.

tchrist

Did you read the linked-to Wikipedia article?

Damkerng T.

I still haven't read the whole answer yet! :D

There are two Wikipedia links mentioned there.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_short_A#.2F.C3.A6.2F_tensing

tchrist

I meant the second of those two.

It is complicated.

Damkerng T.

Definitely complicated!

I mean, it's quite complicated in any language.

tchrist

I certainly do not have the same vowel in fan as I have in fang. The latter is very tense for me, as I initially indicated in comments.

Oh, it’s not complicated in Spanish: there are only five vowels, and they don’t reduce. :)

Damkerng T.

11:14

nods -- I remember I've seen another page about vowel shifts in Wikipedia.

@tchrist Oh, I see! :-)

Thanks for pointing out the second link. I have something interesting to read this evening!

tchrist

Sung Latin is the same: just five vowels. Technically, Latin had a long/short phonemic distinction, but that’s lost in singing anyway.

Damkerng T.

11:30

Umm... I haven't watched this movie! (Maybe I've seen some of the scenes but definitely missed this one.)

The Hamburger Fun

►

(via: reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/309261/…, which is via ell.stackexchange.com/questions/71632/…)

tchrist

14:02

I’m not so sure this belongs on ELL:

0

A: What grammar constructions are used in "Do you want me to speak French?"

What’s happening here in English is that you have an infinitive clause serving as a noun phrase. Since it is acting a noun phrase, it can be used anywhere a noun can be used, including as the object of a verb, as the subject of a sentence, as the object of preposition, or (nearly) anywhere else ...

Damkerng T.

14:47

I think I can answer that.

It's a catenative complement.

A complex non-finite clause.

A raised one, iirc.

Oh, you've written an answer! -- reading...

Nice comparison (with French, Spanish, and Portuguese)!

+1 for 😝

:D

Damkerng T.

15:08

Related: Why is it “to start laughing” and not “to start to laugh”? (Like tchrist's answer below, but with a little different terminology, "to speak French" is a non-finite clause, "Do you want me to speak French?" is a complex catenative construction, where "me" is a raised object. According to A Student's Introduction to English Grammar, "[It (a raised object)] is located syntactically in the matrix clause but belongs semantically in the catenative complement.") — Damkerng T. 3 mins ago

I found that page in Google Books!

Anonymous

17:31

In Japanese songs, heavy syllables are sometimes given two beats, sometimes only one.

Anonymous

Japanese has only five vowels, but length is phonemic, so you could say it has ten. No one really likes analyzing it that way, though.

Anonymous

Old Japanese had more vowels, by the way, but they merged long ago, leaving only five in the modern language.

Anonymous

Five is such a neat number of vowels!

Anonymous

Those vowels are /a i u e o/, and all five have long versions.

Anonymous

But the intuition of native speakers (influenced by the orthography, no doubt) is that the mora is a more basic unit than the syllable.

Anonymous

17:38

So they're not very keen on analyzing Japanese as having ten vowel phonemes /a i u e o ā ī ū ē ō/.

Anonymous

There isn't really a consensus on how to handle long vowels, though. Many phonologists are happy with a simple doubling, something like /aa ii uu ee oo/.

Anonymous

And that works okay for many purposes, although it makes it hard to capture the distinction between oō and ōo. There tends to be a slight dip in intensity where the sound is rearticulated in strings like those.

Anonymous

Most phonologists in Japan have a special segment that represents vowel lengthening.

Anonymous

Depending on the linguist, it's written /R/ or /H/ (or with the small versions /ʀ/ or /ʜ/).

Anonymous

So the long vowel sequences would be /aʜ iʜ uʜ eʜ oʜ/.

Anonymous

17:51

Likewise, for geminate consonants they suggest a special segment written /Q/

Anonymous

tatte = /taQte/

Anonymous

Vowel length is sometimes distinguished in songs, sometimes not. Consonant length is usually distinguished in songs.

Anonymous

For vowel length, it's fairly easy. You just sing two beats instead of one for a long vowel. But heavy syllables of all sorts are often squished into single beats in music, so it's not a consistent distinction.

Damkerng T.

I think it's quite tricky with /y/.

Anonymous

Oh, can you explain?

Damkerng T.

17:54

Like, is it "ohayo" or "ohaiyo"?

Anonymous

Oh, in rapid speech /aio/ may be indistinguishable from /ayo/.

Damkerng T.

Also, it's "ohayou"!

Anonymous

They're usually distinct in music, but I guess that depends on how they're singing! :-)

Anonymous

Yes, that is how it's transliterated, though not how it's pronounced

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

17:57

That orthographic う in おはよう represents the second half of a long /o/ sound.

Anonymous

So we could write it /ohayoo/ or /ohayoʜ/ in phonemic notation, depending on what system we're using.

Anonymous

Usually when linguists use romanized representations of Japanese, they're trying to represent the language itself rather than a transliterated version of the kana-based orthography, so they don't usually write things like ohayou.

Anonymous

But non-linguists tend to like it better when things match up with kana.

Anonymous

So they tend to like ohayou better than ohayoo or such.

Anonymous

(The system with macrons to represent vowel length is not terribly popular among any group at the moment!)

Damkerng T.

18:00

It's easier to remember fewer systems. :-)

@snailboat I'm sure it's about our keyboards.

Ah, hello! @Nihilist_Frost Welcome to the room.

Anonymous

In the romanization of place names, the most common thing to do is not to indicate vowel length at all: Tokyo rather than Tōkyō.

Anonymous

There are all sorts of systems in use, and they're all different!

Anonymous

It's all very confusing.

Anonymous

But it's worth pointing out that it's not actually pronounced ohayou.

Anonymous

I wonder why they stopped partway when revising the kana orthography. It mostly lines up with pronunciation now, but there are just a few sticking points like that.

Anonymous

18:07

Aesthetics? Would おはよお be less pleasing to look at?

Anonymous

I wonder.

Damkerng T.

I think I like おはよお! I wonder which came first, おはよう or ohayou?

^My pasting ate my words!

Anonymous

/ohayaku/ →　/ohayau/ → /ohayoo/

Anonymous

So two sound changes: /k/ was elided, then /au/ changed to /oo/.

Anonymous

Same thing with arigatou: /arigataku/ → /arigatau/ → /arigatoo/

Anonymous

18:13

So the う at the end was originally pronounced /u/. That's why it's there :-)

Damkerng T.

Ahh... Is this the same for all the u's at the end?

Anonymous

Unfortunately, final う is often pronounced /u/.

Anonymous

思う is /omou/, not /omoo/.

Anonymous

So the writing system doesn't consistently tell you the actual pronunciation.

Anonymous

As a learner, the easiest thing to remember is that verbs ending in う are pronounced with /u/.

Anonymous

18:15

Most other sequences that look like /ou/ are actually /oo/.

Anonymous

The volitional ending, as in 書こう /kak-oo/ is always /oo/.

Anonymous

A few words are ambiguous, like ソウル, which some speakers pronounce /sooru/ and others pronounce /souru/.

Anonymous

But if you just memorize that rule (verbs like 思う have /u/, otherwise sequences that look like ou are actually /oo/), you should be set :-)

Anonymous

It'll work 99% of the time.

Anonymous

(I guess you have to know that things like ありがとう and おはよう aren't verbs!)

Damkerng T.

18:19

Ah, I didn't!

They sound like complete utterances to me.

Anonymous

They are.

Anonymous

Etymologically, both are adjective forms.

Anonymous

From ありがたい ari-gata-i and はやい haya-i

Anonymous

lit. 'hard to be/exist' and 'early/fast'

Anonymous

But both ありがとう and おはよう are interjections now, shortened from ありがとうございます and おはようございます

Damkerng T.

18:21

Oh, interjections! I though they were nouns. :D

Anonymous

ありがとうございます and おはようございます are (etymologically) hyper-polite adjective forms that are no longer productive for most speakers.

Anonymous

For example, よろしい 'good' would be よろしゅうございます in this form.

Anonymous

But these forms sound a bit over-the-top to most speakers today, and you won't hear them a lot outside of fixed expressions like ありがとうございます!

Damkerng T.

I think it's the only one that I've heard.

Anonymous

Well, along with おはよう！ :-)

Damkerng T.

18:27

I think I haven't really heard おはようございます in anime/dorama/TV shows.

Hmm... wait...

I'm not sure. Do the hosts in Morning Musume speak おはようございます?

Anonymous

I don't know! :-) It sounds likely.

Anonymous

The adjective forms with elided /k/ are still productive in Western Japan (Kansai).

Anonymous

So you'll hear よう /yoo/ instead of よく /yoku/ 'well, a lot, often, surprising'

Anonymous

Although most of what they put on TV and radio is Eastern speech (Kantō).

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Oh, I remember we talked a few times about punctuation choices in transcription!

Anonymous

18:36

It just came up in a comment on Language Log: languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=21847#comment-1503453

Damkerng T.

Wow, that's a rather long comment!

Anonymous

The portion in red is Mark Liberman's response.

Anonymous

If anyone's colorblind, I mean the portion marked '(myl)'.

Damkerng T.

I can see red fine. :-)

> It’s coming from more than Mexico, it’s coming from all over South and Latin America, and it’s coming probably — probably — from the Middle East. But we don’t know, because we have no protection and we have no competence, we don’t know what’s happening. And it’s got to stop and it’s got to stop fast.

I'm curious which band that paragraph would get if it were in IELTS. :P

Repeating parts of sentences like this is actually an art form, imho.

But I guess that this kind of pattern is going to be bred out in Exam English.

> Likely this persists because Microsoft Word includes the Flesch-Kincaid readability test.

Hehe! I didn't know that because I don't use Microsoft Word.

BTW, Hiro is back! (But you must already know that.)

Anonymous

Oh, I haven't been keeping up with that show. I know we're going to watch it eventually!

Anonymous

18:46

Lately I haven't been watching TV.

Damkerng T.

Ah, okay. I'd better not spoil it. :-)

1

Q: If you want. It's your call.

My friend answered me with this sentence: If you want. It's your call. What does "It's your call" mean?

meaning

Nothing uncommon...

but why is saying "My call is ..." weird (at least to me)? I don't know.

"It's your call." "Well, my call is ..." <-- I think nobody says this.

Anonymous

19:35

@DamkerngT. Yeah, I think you're right.

Damkerng T.

Isn't that curious? :-)

Anonymous

Sometimes it's followed by an interrogative content clause.

Anonymous

It's your call whether . . .

Anonymous

But not very often.

Anonymous

Examples from COCA:

Anonymous

19:38

> My attitude toward this is that if you're gay, it's your call when or when not you're going to tell the world.

Anonymous

Really? When or when not?

Damkerng T.

Interesting!

Anonymous

> You might have to pay more interest, but that really can't be your focus right now. This is an easy case for them to make. It's your call how to plead, but you said you wanted to get help, and getting help is going to basically be your main punishment if you plead out. So that's what I strongly suggest you do.

Anonymous

I'm really interested in that when or when not.

Anonymous

> Topic two - hidden cameras, when or when not to use them is always a difficult decision for a television news producer or correspondent, and this week, another case is under the microscope.

Damkerng T.

19:40

Indeed! It sounds like it's ungrammatical, but someone really said it!

Anonymous

> There is a great deal of ambiguity concerning the issue of confidentiality and when or when not to breach that confidentiality with risk-taking students.

Anonymous

It sounds much better with to.

Anonymous

Those are the only three examples of when or when not in COCA.

Damkerng T.

The last two sound much better.

I think it makes sense in repeatable actions.

The first one is a one-time thing.

Anonymous

That's a good point!

Damkerng T.

19:43

Hmm... maybe the speaker thought of it as something that is needed to be done repeatedly.

Anonymous

Well, if you conceptualize it as a decision that needs to be made repeatedly: not now, not now, now!

Damkerng T.

The syntax of the first one is also curious. I think it works fine with just "when".

But because it's used with "or when not", it does sound weird.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Hey, what do you think of this? :-) youtube.com/watch?v=nYsxN3u3iOk

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I was trying to figure out how to interpret it.

Damkerng T.

I think I understand only 80-90% of what he sang!

(I tried not to look at the sub.)

Ah, it's better the second time. :-)

Anonymous

19:49

I think there are a couple possible interpretations of the when or when not in the first sentence, and I'm not sure which one was intended.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Oh!

Anonymous

Are the tones intact?

Damkerng T.

@snailboat The rhythm and forcing the tones make some words sound too exotic to me.

I'm still not sure what he sang between 0:00-0:05. :-)

Anonymous

Oh, that part's from the original. It's German with a Japanese accent.

Damkerng T.

Ahh :D

Anonymous

19:52

> Seid ihr das Essen? Nein, wir sind der Jäger!

Anonymous

I hear the German in the song sounds rather strange to German speakers, but I don't speak German so I can't tell!

Anonymous

This cover sounded to me like the tones weren't intact.

Damkerng T.

So I think it makes sense that they included the subtitles! :D

Anonymous

I was curious whether you heard cues in the pitch that made you hear the correct tones, because my ear isn't trained to hear Thai tones.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Ah, I see :-)

Anonymous

19:55

I guess because it's supposed to sound like the Japanese version!

Damkerng T.

nods -- I think this is a very good example why lyric translation is not easy.

Anonymous

Oh, it's really hard! I've tried translating lyrics that fit the meter of the original song, both English → Japanese and Japanese → English, and it seems like an impossible task!

Damkerng T.

กำมือที่มีอยู่ (ลุยไปทุกหนแห่ง) -- Ack!

กำมือที่มีอยู่ ~ clench existing fists

Yeah, I guess my fists do exist!

Anonymous

Weird!

Damkerng T.

I think they meant both fists.

Another interpretation would be "clench the fists you have"

In any case, I think it's not an easy song to translate. :D

Anonymous

20:04

The original Japanese lyrics were written by Revo, and he really likes unusual words.

Anonymous

He also likes to play with kanji, but of course that aspect can't really be translated!

Damkerng T.

The other version is very funny: youtube.com/watch?v=ZLfOVpV47vQ

Too bad it's only in Thai!

Anonymous

Haha, what the?

Damkerng T.

The lyrics I think are as he likes it. :D

I can't stop laughing! youtube.com/watch?v=CbVQplnd6kw

The last gag in the clip (3:48):

> "Student, is there anyone who can speak European languages?"
"I can, sir."
"Give me an example."
"Correct. Incorrect. Correct. Incorrect."
"What language is that?!!"
"Czech, sir."

("Czech" is pronounced "check" in Thai. :P)

Anonymous

Ah, if only I could understand!

Damkerng T.

20:16

> "Do you know any other language?!"
"On. Off. On. Off. On. Off."
"What language is that?!!"
"Swiss, sir."

("Swiss" is pronounced "switch". :P)

Most of the jokes are quite language specific. I wonder if some of them works in other languages (like Japanese) as well.

For example, the first joke is about บันไดหนีไฟ ("fire escape ladder"), บันได = ladder, หนี = escape, ไฟ = fire.

They punned it as บันไดหนีไฟ ~ the ladder escaped the fire. (So the ladder was gone when one of the characters went to the ladder when there was a fire!)

Anonymous

Native speakers do sometimes put words together in ways I don't expect. One of my friends said today "as we wait for it to be built and fall down and rebuilt".

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Ah, the original song sounds like it's all autotuned!

@snailboat Ah, the omitted "to be" comes back in the last part!

Anonymous

Coordination of unlikes!

Catija

Hey. I need some advice but I don't think it's appropriate in here... anyone want to chat with me in the other room?

Transcript for